Network Data Management Committee Meeting Announcement

The data management discussions at the recent NWG meeting resulted in the formation of a Network Data Management Committee to be chaired by Doug McKay, IBM. The purpose of the committee, as stated in RFC 146, is:

      (a)  to classify the issues involved and to propose
           various approaches;
      (b)  to integrate the hitherto independent network
           activities that address problems in the area of data
           sharing; and
      (c)  to set up and coordinate appropriate experiments
           to test the services developed and to evaluate
           alternative approaches.

An informal meeting was held Wednesday morning, 19 May to estab- lish an

approach for achieving the above objectives. The attendees were:

         Peggy Karp           MITRE
         Doug McKay           IBM
         Tom O'Sullivan       Raytheon
         Ari Ollikainin       UCLA
         Dr. Larry Roberts    ARPA
         Dick Winter          CCA

Due to an overlap with a file transfer committee meeting, membership of

the data management committee was not established.

A decision was made to hold a data management meeting at CCA in Cambridge prior to the next general NWG meeting. The structure and format of the meeting will be similar to that of the network graphics meeting (RFC 87); that is, the price of admission for an organization is a working paper on one or more of the areas chosen for discussion, accompanied by an oral presentation.

One of the original objectives of the meeting was to elicit comments on the data language for the data computer, following a presentation of design specifications by CCA. Due to a change in scheduling at CCA, they will discuss the facilities to be provided by the data computer rather than language itself. Therefore meeting participants will have an opportunity to provide input to the language design which will be specifically directed at provision of the facilities.

Some suggested topics for position papers are:

      (a)  philosophical discussion on computer network
           data sharing;
      (b)  syntactic and semantic considerations for data
           description and access languages;
      (c)  approaches for the integration of data handling
           services already available;
      (d)  experimentation methodology for evaluating
           alternative data sharing techniques;
      (e)  information content and structure of a network
           data directory; and
      (f)  operational or control protocol.

Any or all of the above topics can be addressed in a single paper. Other ideas for position paper topics can be gleaned from RFC #s 144 and 146. Many of the comments made at the data management session, 18 May, at the NWG meeting (RFC 164, pp. 26-29) can be expanded and expounded upon.

Position papers should be submitted ti Doug McKay by 16 July (received no later than 19 July). A meeting agenda, copies of all submitted papers, and a background bibliography will be distributed to all participants by 23 July. The meeting will be held at CCA, 565 Technology Square, Cambridge, Mass. from 2 August until 4 August. All participants should contact Marty Ginsberg, CCA (617-491-3670) by 16 July for hotel reservations.

[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]

[ into the online RFC archives by Simone Demmel 5/97 ]